Out of sight, out of mind — venting steam, heating warm water to hot, condensate going to cooling towers are signs of opportunity.
Wind turbines and Photovoltaics have an enviable position in the energy world for a variety of reasons. They are simple to understand by the lay person, don’t directly emit gases or pollutants (if you don’t count their manufacture), renewable, and only require a grid, a defined power purchase agreement and net metering to produce the desired return on investment. They are hip, cool, and look sleak. By contrast, energy efficiency is complex in nature, doesn’t have much cache or even visibility, and is directly coupled to an existing process, plant, or building. This last element is the one that provides the greatest opportunity for high returns on investment (in most cases far greater than any energy generation project could attain), and the greatest risk of failure (each project is necessarily a customized situation and approach). However, the risk is not commensurate with the actual potential for failure. It is generally overestimated by engineers and management because of 3 key issues.
The product or manufacturing process will be adversely affected by the energy efficiency project. This is clearly the chief factor in the process engineer’s head — will the project result in problems which are more expensive to fix then the savings. The energy efficiency engineer should follow the physican’s Hippocratic oath of “do no harm”. This will be the result of thorough analysis of the current situation and the proposed change by all stakeholders — process engineers, operators, building occupants and workers. There needs to be buy in by all parties so that “improvements” won’t be eroded by manual changes in controls, new processes or products, or other predictable outcomes. Everyone must be aligned for energy efficiency to work and produce returns.
The plant or building could be sold, retired, or completely changed before the energy efficiency project is paid for. This is real but often exaggerated due to the emphasis on keeping optionality. It’s in the category of “paralysis by analysis”. Energy efficiency starts reaping rewards as soon as the project is completed, but demands action. Waiting too long will only insure that it doesn’t produce the expected value and that one of the above scenarios does come true.
Capital for the project must compete with other projects that have more immediate concerns to the company. Energy efficiency can’t compete with more pressing needs like deferred maintenance, improvements to production volume or quality, projects that reduce labor, and environmental/safety needs. But these aren’t really zero sum gain investments. Energy efficiency investments will add to the bottom line directly and could be financed by third parties if desired. Alternatively, using a separate pool of money that is replenished from the savings and incentives produced could be utilized.
Energy efficiency is boring and tedious (you were expecting it to be fun and exciting?). It requires thorough analysis, constant vigilance, working with all stakeholders, and taking deliberate action. On the plus side, it is challenging to bring all these things together and rewarding when it happens. It drives me to push the envelope and find new and innovative energy efficient projects that achieve high returns for the plant and buildings. In every case I have identified and implemented, the rewards are real, the returns better than expected and quite healthy, and the risks were minimized or eliminated.